Long Beach is not Los Angeles. The suburb, if that’s something you can call the seventh-largest city in California, is geographically close to the City of Angels but emotionally distant. The hometown of both Snoop Dogg and Billie Jean King — a set of Long Beach Polytechnic High graduates with pretty disparate skill sets — is culturally its own.

As such, growing up in the LBC meant trips into Los Angeles were an occasion, the kind of pack-the-car event that is normally associated with a road trip: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays that might have been spent in the city exploring the still-striking Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad or the cliffs of Malibu.

When I was growing up, L.A. felt far from me: I had great memories there, but my heart was in Long Beach.

I went north for college — to UC Santa Barbara. UCLA had waitlisted me, and the prospect of going to USC hurt my wallet just thinking about it. At the midpoint of my fourth year in Santa Barbara, I met Becca.

Introduced by our mutual friends, she was pitched to me as “tall and blond, with curly hair,” a historically winning phenotype for me, even if that “blond” mention was an elaborate brunette farce. We hit it off pretty quickly.

She was brilliant, the kind of smart that has the answer to every question. Gorgeous, the kind of beautiful that looks as good in a ripped Carhartt jacket and Dr. Martens as in a ballgown. And she was caring, the kind of person who would answer your phone call in a hurricane.

Becca was from Salt Lake City and had not spent much time in Los Angeles. Perhaps ironically, we had this in common. Nonetheless, I was her go-to for local information on the city.

Once I graduated, she spent time with me back in Long Beach. My charade, as her wealth of Los Angeles information, was doomed from the start, exposed during a particularly brutal bout of freeway traffic. Sitting at the bottleneck where the 10 Freeway meets the 405, Becca asked me whether I had been to the Last Bookstore in downtown L.A. With the glow of taillights illuminating my obvious answer in the negative, she insisted that we go.

So off we went, with Becca expertly navigating the streets that I was supposed to have known by now. The Last Bookstore proved more interesting for her in its vinyl collection than in its volume of volumes. She perused grotesque album covers while I investigated the indie art studios upstairs. We reconnected for a kitschy Instagram flick under the store’s arch of books.

The experience made me realize that I had much to learn about Los Angeles from this Utah girl.

She moved back to Salt Lake City after she finished school at UC Santa Barbara and we began dating long-distance. Every month, Becca would visit me in Long Beach, and like clockwork, she would take me into L.A. It got to the point where she was my tour guide to the city that I grew up next to.

On one outing, we packed a couple of poke bowls and headed to the Hollywood Bowl to see Weezer and Alanis Morissette. When the former’s song “Beverly Hills” was played, my mind drifted to what life would look like if I did in fact live in Beverly Hills, and I was “rollin’ like a celebrity.” In my visions of the future, Becca was with me.

Another outing had us deep in the bowels of the popular Melrose Trading Post. Flanked by overpriced band tees and 20-somethings who somehow managed to all look like the same type of hipster, we hunted for bargains. I picked up a briefcase of all things, for 20 bucks, for my shiny new job in Santa Monica. Money well spent. Becca ended up inevitably with some vintage sweater bearing a college logo. “I’m gonna crop it,” she would later announce. (What’s a flea market purchase without a tasteful amount of midriff?)

Becca showed me a side of L.A. that I had never explored.

But distance took its toll on our relationship. I felt the pressure of my new job, working long hours and sitting every day in traffic for the length of a James Cameron movie. She, for her part, was adjusting to life at home in Utah, on the hunt for a job and with no near future plans to move to Los Angeles. Conversations about our relationship reared their ugly heads.

Maybe the two of us had run our course. There is only so much time realistically that a relationship can last when its participants are 700 miles apart. We began to bicker more frequently, sometimes it felt like just for the sake of it. She planned a trip out to L.A. for us to assess how our relationship would move forward.

I picked her up from Los Angeles International Airport, and we headed to Santa Monica. Dinner was hand-rolled sushi, nice cocktails and a lot of “I” statements. Then I made my first L.A. decision in our relationship. We walked to the Santa Monica Pier.

As with many clichés, there is something comfortable about an oceanfront boardwalk. The sounds of laser guns from the nearby arcade join the predictable arc of the Ferris wheel in something that feels between nostalgic and therapeutic. I woefully underestimated the difficulty of the rigged three-point basketball shootout, and she, likewise, misjudged her stomach’s resilience after we went on an irresponsibly fast rotating roller coaster. We strolled the length of the pier, people-watching, then I took her hand in mine.

Amid the chaos of children screaming, buzzers ringing and neon lights blinking, we felt a level of certainty — a kind of quiet calm that I haven’t felt before.

In that moment, we were never so sure.

The author is a freelance writer and media professional living in Long Beach. His byline has appeared in Business Insider, Yahoo! and other publications.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.

This week, statues proliferated, we lost a great actor, and being animated was no protection from being incarcerated.

Here’s what NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.

Raking leaves

I am enjoying raking leaves more than I can say. We have a dogwood tree in the front yard that has recently released all of its leaves. They are coming down in reds and yellows and greens. I remember going around in elementary school and picking up a pretty leaf that I would take to school to put in a book or on a page, and I loved it. I love the smell of the falling leaves. In two weeks, I know I’m going to hate it but right now, I am enjoying this. It’s heaven. — Bob Mondello

‘Songs of a Lost World’ by The Cure

Any time a band takes kind of a long break from recording, say, 16 years, I don’t expect the subsequent album to be among an artist’s career highlights. But I absolutely love the new album by The Cure, Songs of a Lost World. It is this lavishly produced, very cohesive and coherent collection of songs. Lyrically, it is very dark. It is, after all, The Cure, which is a band known to inject their songs with a little bit of bleakness. But it’s also very beautiful. The song “Alone” for example is not peppy but is leavened by the beauty of the arrangements in ways that make it feel not oppressive.

When I interviewed Robert Smith of The Cure for Morning Edition, I asked him if he’d thought about what he wants his final music statement to be and he replied, “Good grief! This is a bit bleak, isn’t it?” It felt like a true endorsement to have Robert Smith think that something I asked him was bleak.

Lawn Mowing Simulator

We have a big election next week. There’s a lot going on in the world. The main thing that is giving me comfort right now is playing video games on my PlayStation 5, including one called Lawn Mowing Simulator.

I am enjoying an imaginary lawn where I sit on a lawn mower and drive it around, mowing the lawn. It’s very satisfying. Sometimes I’m very efficient and I try to get the job done and earn my money and a bonus for getting it done in a normal period of time. Other times I just ride and do little circles in the lawn mower and make pretty patterns in the lawn. It’s giving me a lot of warm fuzzies as I try to maintain my equilibrium in these tense times. — Linda Holmes

More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter

by Linda Holmes

The second season of The Diplomat has arrived. I really loved the first season, and this one is very good, too — although at six episodes, it’s shorter than I wish it were. Like the third season of The Bear, it feels less like a season and more like half of a two-part season. But Keri Russell remains excellent, and the addition of Allison Janney is a masterstroke. And check out Eric Deggans’ review of the new season.

Have you been playing Astro Bot? I have. (Just ask all my other responsibilities how neglected they feel.) A platformer for PlayStation 5, it allows you to become an adorable little robot who runs through various levels, punching and jumping and pulling on things, and it’s wildly entertaining. If you’ve played Mario games on a Nintendo device, Astro Bot’s aesthetic (which has appeared in a couple of previous games starring the same robot) will remind you of those, but it has a vigor and a kick all its own.

Rachel Martin is such a good interviewer, and Seth Meyers is somebody I’ve admired for a long time. So I was delighted to see him on Wild Card talking about all manner of things. In one section of the conversation, he essentially says he had more ambition than talent when it came to acting in movies – which is the kind of thing you don’t hear from very successful people all that often.

Dhanika Pineda adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment “What’s Making Us Happy” for the Web. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It seemed like a simple request.

Election workers asked a voter in Hamilton Township to take off her MAGA hat and cover up her shirt expressing support for former President Donald Trump.

Enraged, the woman took off her hat and shirt, spinning it like a lasso. She then proceeded to vote, wearing her bra, after hurling vulgar epithets at the workers before a crowd of as many as 100 voters, several people told NJ Advance Media.

In Gloucester Township, a voter waltzed into the polling location wearing a red cloak and white bonnet, inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale, the dystopian book and television series about a patriarchal society where women are forced into sexual slavery to bear children for their masters.

She complied with the request to remove her cloak and bonnet before voting, and then she walked out quietly while putting her outfit back on.

Early voting began in New Jersey last Saturday and turnout has been heavy so far. In addition to long lines, poll workers around the state have had to contend with, and sometimes confront, belligerent people who insist on showing their candidate preferences at the polls. Many may not realize that wearing political messaging while voting is not allowed, election officials said, but some simply don’t seem to care.

Indeed, ”electioneering” is against the law in the Garden State.

People cannot “distribute or display any circular or printed matter or offer any suggestion or solicit any support for any candidate, party or public question within the polling place or room or within a distance of 100 feet of the outside entrance to such polling place or room, or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box in use during the conduct of an election.”

That includes wearing T-shirts, hats or buttons, for example, that support a candidate or can be interpreted as trying to sway a voter’s opinion, election officials said. Bumper stickers and flags on vehicles within 100 feet of polling places are also prohibited.

When the “handmaid” voter arrived at the Gloucester Township polling location for early voting on Saturday, at first, poll workers thought she was wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume, perhaps for a Halloween party.

She was dressed in a flowing red cloak with a white bonnet.

Then workers saw the bloody red handprints on the bonnet.

“When the board worker asked, she said it was Handmaid’s Tale,” said Sarah Napper, one of Camden County’s election administrators, who said the costume was a political statement. “We asked her to remove it. She did, but she proudly put it back on when she walked out of here.”

The woman who ultimately voted in her bra in Mercer County took offense when she was asked to remove a MAGA hat and T-shirt.

It happened at the Colonial Fire House in Hamilton Township, where voters waited on a long line for their turn to cast a ballot, said Jill Moyer, chair of the Mercer County Board of Elections.

“I asked her to remove her hat and said if you want to go get a jacket from your car, I will hold your place in line or you could go into the bathroom to turn the shirt inside out,” Moyer said of the Saturday encounter. “Before I could get it all out, she took off her shirt and flung it around.”

The woman started to curse at election workers and call them “nasty” names, Moyer said.

Moyer said she went to call the police but the woman quickly voted and left the building.

But before the voter left, one witness told NJ Advance Media, they captured a photo of the woman as she voted in her bra.

The witness said before the voter left, she put her shirt back on, inside out this time, and she also donned her hat, but not before she had another message for poll workers. “She gave the finger and said ‘Suck my ****,’” a witness said.

“I felt so bad for (the poll workers). They’re just trying to do their jobs and people are saying this god-awful stuff,” the witness said.

But it didn’t end there. The photo vent viral on social media, getting the attention of vice presidential candidate JD Vance. He retweeted the photo and called the voter a “patriot.” Vance later removed the post.

It’s not just about apparel. At the Galaxy Mall in Guttenberg in Hudson County on Saturday, Ben Applegate was standing in line with several dozen people, all waiting for their turn to vote. He said he heard someone start clapping for the crowd, as if they were happy to see so many people had come to cast their ballots. It was a man leaning over the second floor railing, he said.

“Then he yelled ‘Go Trump,’ and a man in a MAGA hat in line behind us said, ‘F*** it, I’m not afraid,’ and also started chanting ‘Trump,’” Applegate said. “I told him it was a polling place and they couldn’t do that here, and told him to shut up.”

The man who was upstairs came down and started walking through the line, shouting, “Trump! Where were you all in 2020?” Applegate said. “The poll workers were mostly older ladies, and I felt so bad for them. They were conferring with each other about what to do.”

Maryanne Kelleher, Hudson County’s Superintendent of Elections and Commissioner of Registration, said the man was “quickly shooed away by onlookers.”

“What we were advised is that Saturday’s incident was a momentary event that ended quickly, and was beyond 100 feet of the polling entrance,” she said.

Election officials across the state noted several dozen reports of electioneering, mostly people who were asked to remove hats or to cover T-shirts, and most complied without incident. But when voters don’t cooperate, poll workers call police for backup.

It happened at the Lower Township Library voting site in Villas, Cape May County, on Saturday, when a voter grew defiant.

“A gentleman had a Trump hat on. He was asked to remove it but he refused,” said Michael Kennedy, registrar and department head of the county Board of Elections. “One of the poll workers called the police. He told them he was being harassed by one of the other voters.”

The man removed the hat when police asked, Kennedy said. At least, he temporarily removed it.

“I was told right before he went in to vote that he put the hat on after the police left,” he said.

With Halloween on Thursday, some election officials said they are expecting more mischief.

“We are waiting for Halloween when someone comes dressed at a candidate,” said Beth Thompson, administrator for the Hunterdon County Board of Elections.

Back in Camden County, at the site of the Handmaid’s Tale incident, Napper, a Republican, said there are times when voters test the limits of the electioneering rules while accusing election workers of partisanship.

“When you talk to a voter and the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, you must be a certain party,’ that’s when I introduce my counterpart,” she said, giving a nod to Nellie McFadden, who serves as the county’s Democratic elections administrator.

“They are testing us,” McFadden said.

They shared the story of another voter who came to cast her ballot wearing a “Make Halloween Great Again” T-shirt. It included a picture of someone wearing a hockey mask like the one made famous by the Mike Meyers character in the Halloween movie franchise.

“It also had Trump hair, so you’re pushing it there,” Napper said.

“The voter said she was being discriminated against when she was asked to cover it up. She said it was a Halloween shirt but it’s a political statement as well,” Napper said.

“We do get pushback, but we try to explain to them we just want to run everything smoothly,” McFadden said. “We want everybody to vote and to be fair and kind to one another. We want this to be a pleasant experience for everyone.”